Moses and Paul in Taubes' Judaism.

Professor Taubes' statement is striking since for the most part Paul and Moses are about as diametrically opposed, in the minds of most Jews, as any two people could possibly be. As Taubes' notes, some Jews aren't without some minuscule of pride that the man billions of Gentiles are so enamored with calling their savior is himself a little ole Jew. But Paul, that's a whole other bailiwick. Mentioning Paul in the same breath as Moses is likely to cause a believing Jew immeasurable discomfort if not downright anger. Which is precisely why Taubes' foundational premise in the noted text is so paradoxical and striking: it's precisely the thing that makes Judaism so enamored with Moses that makes them hate Paul.

Professor Taubes uses the Talmud and midrashim in general to show that the foundation of Jewish respect and love for Moses is largely based on the fact that after Israel fails God miserably ---such that God speaks of turning away from Israel and starting a new people, a new epoch, initiated by Moses himself ----Moses not only refuses the offering, but encourages God himself to back down on that element of his plan for Israel and the now stillborn new epoch.

In Taube's brilliant mind, the stillborn epoch is still born. And it's precisely for that reason that Paul and Moses are juxtaposed in almost a yin and yang manner in the minds of many Jews.




John

John D. Brey said:

Professor Taubes uses the Talmud and midrashim in general to show that the foundation of Jewish respect and love for Moses is largely based on the fact that after Israel fails God miserably ---such that God speaks of turning away from Israel and starting a new people, a new epoch, initiated by Moses himself ----Moses not only refuses the offering, but encourages God himself to back down on that element of his plan for Israel and the stillborn new epoch.

In Taube's brilliant mind, the stillborn epoch is still born. And it's precisely for that reason that Paul and Moses are juxtaposed in almost a yin and yang manner in the minds of many Jews.

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To say the stillborn epoch is still born is justified in Taubes' argumentation by Paul's own pointing out that God's ways are not like man's ways. God's plan and purpose isn't really willy nilly such that he could be dissuaded from seeing his perfect plan and purpose though to its final futurition. As Taubes reads Paul, Paul points out that Moses didn't in fact change God's mind. That's merely a historical anthropopathism acknowledging God's gracious willingness to temporarily change his plan for the sake of frail and fragile human beings. According to Paul, as read by Taubes, God's plan never changes such that what Moses thought he had dissuaded God against doing, he in fact, merely postponed, until . . . this is difficult to say in the potential presence of Jews . . . one greater (not the alleged savior of the Gentiles but another first century Jew) than Moses arrives.




John

John D. Brey said:

My thesis is that Paul understands himself as outbidding Moses. . . The opening of the Jews, of God's holy people, to the Gentiles. And this holy people of God is transfigured, that is, the old people winds up becoming unclear. This Moses would not have done, and Paul knows that very well, that he is taking on a task that is unprecedented and unique. I don't read this rhetorically, what Paul is saying here, at the beginning of 9 ----that he is burdened with great sorrow and anguish at all of what he's leaving behind: the sonship, the covenant, the fathers, the worship, the promises, the Messiah ---there is nothing, after all that does not rest on this people. So how can someone who thinks of Israel this way dare to venture a single step beyond?

Ibid. p. 39, 41.​

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Taubes' thesis is that Moses so loved Israel, the sonship, the covenant, the fathers, the worship, the promises, the Messiah, that he couldn't, wouldn't, bring himself to leave that behind even for the plan of God. Though he doesn't say so explicitly, Taubes appears to be insinuating that when Moses says to write him out of the book, or plan, that has Israel set aside, he, Moses, is, either literally, or on some conscious or subconsciously level, revealing to God that what God's plan requires is beyond Moses' powers. Moses is telling God he will have to find someone else, someone whose powers go beyond his own, beyond, and this is hard to say in the potential presence of Jewish readers, Moses' power and spiritual abilities.

What Moses could not do, notwithstanding the high rung of spiritual power and authority he'd obtained, a latter day Jew who sat at the feet of Gamalial in fact was able to accomplish. Which explains why the attitude of modern day Judaism is opposed to no man in its vehemence like it's opposed to Paul. What Moses wouldn't, couldn't do, Paul (at least in Taubes thinking) could do and did do:


As Taubes is being interpreted, Deuteronomy 18:15-18 (noted in Acts 3:22) is speaking not of Jesus as Messiah, but of Paul, who, took on the burden Moses postponed in Deuteronomy 18:15-18. Moses knows, as a man must, his limitations. He warns Israel that a man will come whose limitations don't delimit God's plan in the manner Moses' limitations did. Moses was the most humble man of the Torah because he not only knew his limitations, but he knew his limitations would require a prophet greater than he to finish what he merely started.

As a footnote to Deuteronomy 18:15-18, when God reveals his plan to temporarily set aside Israel (since his promises to Israel can't be changed, or revoked), Moses calls the plan "evil." The scribes and sage of Israel take it upon themselves to change the text of the Torah to change the harshness of what Moses says to God. In effect, Moses says, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not. Moses, like Paul, would rather die (Romans 9:1-3) than be the implement through which God's terrifying plan for Israel's temporary setting aside be instigated.



John

John D. Brey said:

My thesis is that Paul understands himself as outbidding Moses. . . The opening of the Jews, of God's holy people, to the Gentiles. And this holy people of God is transfigured, that is, the old people winds up becoming unclear. This Moses would not have done, and Paul knows that very well, that he is taking on a task that is unprecedented and unique.

Ibid. p. 39, 41.​

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Within Professor Taubes' larger context, i.e., Moses as the precursor to Paul, no verse seem more important to the current examination than Deuteronomy 9:14. A student of the word of God is therefore naturally flabbergasted to realize that very few verses are ignored so completely by the Jewish sages as is Deuteronomy 9:14. It's literally difficult to procure a Jewish understanding of the verse since it seems like it's poison to the Jewish exegetes and sages who act as though it doesn't exist.


Surely the E.F. Hutton-like silence of the sages, in the light of this verse, comes, on some level of cognition and intuition, precisely from the fact that this verse turns Isaiah 65:12-16, into not just prophesy of the highest order, but historically fulfilled prophesy. The serious student of God's word, upon reading the verse above, must surely think of Isaiah 65:12-16, since it appears to be a direct parallel to Deuteronomy 9:14. Isaiah appears to be specifically channeling not just Deuteronomy 9:14 (and its contextual nuances), but beyond that, almost beyond belief, the prophet appears to lend the prophetic utterances found in verses 12-16, specifically to Taubes' insinuation that Paul is the new Moses:


Isaiah's prophesy situates itself directly within the context of God speaking with Israel at Sinai, after the golden calf fiasco. Isaiah's prophesy has God speaking directly to Israel rather than through Moses their mediator. As he told Moses, so he tells Israel directly (in Isaiah 65:12-16), that they are ---all of them ----going to bend down for the slaughter.

Isaiah's deep exegesis and revelation of Deuteronomy 9:14 moves not back to Moses plea to God to withhold his judgment on Israel, but instead moves forward directly to Professor Taubes' insinuation that though God withholds his judgment on Israel for the sake of Moses' intense plea, nevertheless, God's plan can only be temporarily postponed; it can't be rescinded. Isaiah's prophesy in 65:12-16, leaps beyond the grace period purchased by Moses prayer, and directs the reader's attention to a striking justification for Professor Taubes' grand theory:


We know from simple and plain context that the verses above are speaking of God's "new" servants (who he promised to Moses prior to Moses' rejection of that phase of God's overarching plan). We know this since Isaiah is jumping from the elimination of (all of) Israel that Moses postponed (through Moses' mediation only some were destroyed), to the full implementation of the original purpose of God's plan. Isaiah jumps forward, beyond the grace period, to the full implementation of Deuteronomy 9:14 that temporarily eliminates all of Israel as the people of God because of the sin of idolatry related to the golden calf.

Where someone might find this exegesis disturbing (to say the least), such that they're unable to accept the rather harsh exegesis that implies a direct relationship between Deuteronomy 9:14 and Isaiah 65:12-16, unfortunately verses 15 and 16 of Isaiah 65 stick the dagger in deeper:


It doesn't take a grand historian, or a great anthropologist, to point out that throughout the nations that are direct representatives of the Pauline dispensation of intercalation, Paul's "new man," almost to a man, blesses his prayers, and swears by, "Jesus' name," who they consider the God of truth. Paul's disciples, and the nations grown out of the Pauline dispensation, swear, constantly, "in Jesus' name," since they consider that name the guarantee and the transcendental guarantor of their truth.

Furthermore, adding insult to opposition to this exegesis is fact that in Deuteronomy 9:14, God says, as Isaiah precisely recounts, that he will blot out the name of his former servants, and, as added by Isaiah, that name ---Jew---will become a curse in the mouth of the newly minted ecclesia, nation, people, of God . . . and Paul.

Surely the brilliant minds of the post-first-century Jewish exegetes are not unaware of the exegetical precision of the foregoing. And it's a sad diminution of their undeniable brilliance and knowledge of the scripture that they should think that by not acknowledging Deuteronomy 9:14 it will just go away. As they know, and as all serious students of the word of God surely know, even an exegesis that is bitter as wormwood in the mouth, can be as sweet as honey in the heart that knows that though God must turn his face from his Son, and his sons, for a time, as part and parcel of his perfect plan, nevertheless his everlasting grace, love, and mercy toward all of Israel (Romans 11:26), can never be permanently rescinded.



John